Far more enjoyable, enlightening and informative than paranoid UFO theories was three-part documentary "Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage and Death" created by redoubtable Helen Castor. I purposely use the word "redoubtable" as in "impressive" because I am quite smitten with Castor - not only that she is a Historian, driven by intellectual curiosity and has a gift to inspire enthusiasm in her audience but she is also a very attractive lady with a warm personality, which for me is quite powerful combination (brain + looks), to be honest I might be a little infatuated with Castor - I saw her already in a documentary titled "She-Wolves: England's Early Queens" which was very interesting, right up my alley and apparently Castor knows what she is talking about, she seems to be quite expert on medieval England. I seriously started considering to read some of her work.
In "Medieval Lives", divided in three parts, Castor explains that trough the description of three main stages in life (birth, marriage, death) we can explain person's attitude to life and so she goes on to examine how people in medieval England went trough them and what were the traditions of the times. In each episode she also consults experts on certain themes (a midwife, a priest, etc), while lovingly referring to her two decades long study of private correspondence of certain Paston family - these letters are the oldest private correspondence in the English language - trough birth, wedding and burial documents Castor examines not just members of Paston family but how people back than lived in general. It is absolutely fascinating - when it comes to birth, for example, only women (read: midwifes) were allowed in a warm and cocooned room, while church and priests were basically only meddling in with their clumsy instruction books written about the subject, but as Castor explains, rules were one thing and the reality another - in a real life people often ignored the rules. When it comes to marriages, it is quite interesting that people initially didn't care for church weddings - that came later - initially people could just agree to get hitched verbally anywhere they felt like it, be it a pub, a cornfield or wherever. My guess is that it was usually followed by roll in a hay and probably forgotten soon afterwards so maybe this is where church came in, to make sure people take their obligations and responsibilities seriously. In cases of aristocratic families, girls were often promised (and often delivered into a marriage) at the extremely young ages - not only that this don't appeal to our current, modern sensibilities but even back than people didn't approve of it themselves, because such young girls often died during childbirth or were later in life incapable of pregnancy ever again. Famous Lady Margaret Beaufort (grandmother of Henry VIII) was one of those child brides and not only was she sent away to her husband at the very tender and vulnerable age of twelve, but the husband died soon afterwards (from plague). When almost identical situation occurred with her granddaughter, imperious old lady strongly disagreed with it and refused to send the young girl in potentially disastrous marriage. As for the deaths, money was often given to churches and monasteries for prayers and masses to be said in the future - we are talking about huge sums of money - which judging from our current perspective is somewhat pointless, kind of throwing it in the wind - but back than people really took this very seriously and wanted to be forgiven for their sins & probably hoped for some immortality, oh well. Not only that I really like Castor but I enjoyed the whole subject very much and it made me wonder how would future generations (in few hundred years) look at our lives and comment how barbaric and ignorant we used to be.
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